A practical (and slightly irreverent) guide to surviving the loss of a spouse

A practical (and slightly irreverent) guide to surviving the loss of a spouse

By Kathy Deters

Let me share two important disclaimers up front: First, I am not a licensed therapist, trained counselor, estate attorney, financial planner, mortician or any of the other professions that would lend themselves to offering technical advice to those who have just lost a spouse. I am a mother. And a writer. And a young (yes, I’m saying young, though my kids would disagree), widow. These are the things that I wish I had known in the first few weeks after my husband died at the age of 41. Second, I’ve learned enough since his death almost two years ago to fill a book, but in those first few weeks after he died, I had neither the time nor the focus to read a book, and I’m betting if you’re reading this, you don’t either. So I’m boiling it down to the basics.

Number one: Don’t be afraid to shop around for the best deal on burial costs.

If you’re thinking, “Wow, she’s a little crass for talking burial,” then consider me guilty as charged, but at a time when you’re facing what are probably significant and completely unplanned expenses, it’s fair to want to save where you can. Since my husband hadn’t given me any direction about his wishes, I knew the right choice for our family was cremation, which was less expensive than a burial, required less long-term maintenance, and frankly, was the best reflection of his no-frills, no-nonsense personality. Between my rush to handle things quickly and my desire to maintain some amount of dignity, I basically chose the funeral home with the fanciest billboard on the interstate and didn’t dicker over costs. Fortunately a quick-thinking relative asked around and found that because we only needed cremation services, not a full-blown service at the funeral home, it was much less expensive to work directly with the crematorium and cut out the middle man. In short, don’t be ashamed to shop around.

On a related note, I’m glad that we opted to have my husband’s “Celebration of Life” service at our family’s church, rather than at a funeral home, because it is our second home. Having the service led by our pastor, who cared deeply about our family and tailored the service to my husband’s life, was an added bonus. Also, from a logistical standpoint, it offered plenty of room to accommodate those in attendance. The one downside is that to this day, I can’t walk into the sanctuary without thinking of his funeral. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing—it certainly frames my perspective of spirituality—but it is something to consider when choosing a service location.

Number two: Be proactive about getting your financial affairs in order.

Most picture grieving widows sitting next to a window in yoga pants and an oversized gray sweatshirt crying as rain falls outside (okay, I might be stealing that from the episode of “Friends” when Rachel and Ross broke up, but you get the idea.) In fact, most of the first six months after my husband’s death were spent on the phone trying to get our health insurance squared away, or in meetings with financial planners trying to figure out the best way to handle a Roth IRA Rollover. Don’t beat yourself up for wanting to get your financial matters in order quickly. If you have kids, it’s kind of essential.

If you’re one of those organized households where both spouses are equally informed on all financial matters and your important documents are stored together in a fireproof safe, this is a relatively simple task. If you’re like me, however, your spouse’s social security number is tucked away under a pile of dusty DVDs in your entertainment center, you have no idea when your cable bill is due or even who your cable provider is, and your banking password is whatever sports team your late husband wasn’t angry with the week he opened the account combined with some random set of numbers that are, you can only speculate, his high school sweetheart’s birthdate. I genuinely felt like I was hacking into my own husband’s life trying to guess various passwords. My paperwork low point was a missing marriage license, which is how I ended up sitting in a parked car crying on the phone to some poor secretary at the Cole County Clerk’s office. 

Anyway, as disorganized as you might be feeling right now, I’m telling you I was much, much worse, and somehow managed to pull it all back together. Here are a few financial issues to consider as soon as possible:

-Contact your spouse’s employer immediately, particularly if your spouse’s life insurance was through his or her employer or your family is on your spouse’s health insurance plan. 

-Start gathering up important paperwork, which will include your spouse’s social security number, your children’s birth certificates, your spouse’s death certificate (this one might take a few weeks after his or her date of death), your health insurance card, numbers for your banking accounts, and your previous year’s taxes. As you gather the documents, keep them in a binder that you can carry with you to appointments.

-Surviving spouses and children are often eligible for benefits through social security. Visit your nearest social security office (yes, in person) to determine your family’s eligibility, and lug that binder of paperwork with you.

-Figure out what bills are due and when, and how they’re paid (autodraft, sending a check in the mail, etc.) I concede, I wasn’t as involved in this part of managing our household as I should have been. Hindsight is 20/20. Also, look at any expenditures related to your spouse that are no longer relevant, such as his or her auto insurance, gym fees, cell phone, etc. A tiny part of my heart broke every time I cancelled some service that my husband used. Another part of me was thinking, “Seriously, he signed up for six premium sports cable packages without telling me?” There are plenty of good ways to be sentimental. Wasting money on services you no longer need isn’t one of them.

Number three: Don’t be in a rush to make major decisions.

Yes, there are some things that have to be addressed immediately, but other major life decisions can, and probably should, wait until you’ve had a chance to come out of the fog. My knee-jerk reaction was to sell my home; though financial considerations were an issue, my bigger motivation was that there were too many memories lingering, and not all were good. I also considered retreating to the comfort and familiarity of my hometown. I took a step back, however, and realized that my house and our community afforded my children a feeling of consistency and stability at a time when they desperately needed it. Also, from a more practical standpoint, after addressing all the paperwork I just described in step two, I just wasn’t in the mood for more.

In the first few months after my husband passed away, I also found myself facing questions from those trying to help me with my finances like where my children planned to go to college, where and how I wanted to retire, and “what excited me about my future.” The answers were, “Hell if I know,” “When, if and how I can afford to,” and “Not a damn thing.” For the most part, nearly two years later, most of those answers are still the same, but at least I have the courage now to admit it, rather than trying to fake a response. In short, address those matters that need your immediate attention in order to keep a roof over your head and food on your table. Everything else can be put on hold.

Number four: Let others help you.

Accepting help was difficult for me. At a time when women in our country are fighting for equal pay, positions of leadership and, well, basic respect and dignity, I wanted my children to view me as capable, strong and self-reliant. You can’t turn on the news or pick up a paper without seeing a story about a single mom who managed to put six kids through Harvard while training for a marathon and launching a Fortune 500 company and writing a New York Times best seller. Meanwhile, I needed help figuring out how to change my furnace filter. But more than that there was, and continues to be, a basic fear that if I accept help, I will become dependent upon it—and the only person I can count on to be around for the entire length of my life is me. It’s a harsh reality I discovered when I lost the person I counted on the most. Instead of accepting the countless offers of assistance, I fell into a Rosie the Riveter mindset after losing my husband: I can juggle my same workload while adjusting to becoming a single mother literally overnight while navigating a lengthy and cumbersome financial and legal process while also grieving the loss of my soulmate. WRONG.

My three grieving children, who now needed more attention than ever, suddenly had fewer parents to provide it. At work, I struggled to focus, as deadlines and decisions competed for my attention with feelings of anger, frustration, powerlessness and, at times, hopelessness. I was overwhelmed by financial decisions that far outweighed my knowledge. In short, I was drowning. I needed help. And more than that, my kids needed me to be willing to take it.

Grief counseling groups offered by schools and churches are a great start. For my children, who have become the epitome of the new “resilience” trend that’s gaining traction, having a few minutes each week to be able to talk with other kids coping with the same feelings meant the difference between being just “okay” and being pretty darned good. Support came in less conventional forms, as well, but always at a time when we needed it most. For anyone who happens to be reading this in an effort to support a grieving loved one, here’s a piece of advice: Worry less about what to say, and more about what you can do. God has gifted most of us with some unique skill, talent or expertise that can be put to good use, even if it might not always be immediately apparent. A relative who had worked for the Department of Revenue drove me to the DMV and helped me fill out paperwork to update the title on my cars. Another relative who is gifted with a green thumb took home the hydrangeas that I had sent for the “Celebration of Life” service and carefully tended to them for months, then transplanted them in my garden. Of course there was also the aforementioned uncle who wasn’t scared to dicker over cremation costs on my behalf, and helped me navigate tons of other financial decisions; the neighbor who baked some form of cookie bar that was worthy of an afternoon tea with the Queen of England; my husband’s former co-worker, who gave up Father’s Day with his own family to take my son to see WWE Money in the Bank when it came to town; the friend who, like a protective mama bird, flew across the country to prepare a home-cooked Persian meal for me; and countless other guardian angels who appeared in our lives at just the right time.

Number five: Be kind to yourself.

Note that being kind to yourself is not necessarily the same as taking care of yourself, though for some, the two might not be mutually exclusive. “Taking care of yourself,” to me, means drinking lots of water, running 6 miles a day, eating leafy greens and doing yoga.“Being kind to myself” meant binge-watching “Bachelor in Paradise,” wearing bright red lipstick and eating Nutella straight from the jar. Even on my worst days, knowing that I still cried less than Ashley I. on “Bachelor in Paradise” made me feel a bit better, and as for the red lipstick, as my fashion-forward teenage daughter told me, “When you look put together on the outside, you feel put together on the inside.” Being kind to yourself means indulging in those things that bring you comfort (within reason—maybe keep those mojitos to a minimum), setting more reasonable expectations for yourself, and forgiving yourself for those mistakes that you are sure to make as you stumble along an unfamiliar, and oftentimes rocky, new path.

Number six: Know that you will be happy again.

The piece of advice that I received most often from others who were grieving was that the sadness and despair would never completely disappear. It’s odd advice to give to someone who is basically drowning in sadness and despair, and really can’t imagine life any other way. I would smile and nod politely, but a small voice in the back of my head was always saying, “Um, no doi!” (I’m a product of the ‘80s, in case you were wondering.) They had the best intentions, of course, but in my opinion, this advice might be better suited to those who are in the role of giving comfort and support to the grieving; there comes a time in the grief process when others expect you to be back to your old self, and find it peculiar when you still cry every time an Ed Sheeran song comes on the radio (lordy that man has recorded a lot of songs, and, like, 97.8 percent of them are tear jerkers.)

So yes, okay, I concede, I’m still heartbroken almost two years later, and I can only assume that if I live to be 100, I will be until my dying breath. But you know what else? I’m also often happy. I laugh. My guilt and regret are dwindling. My anxieties are subsiding. I can raise my children, hold a job and be a (mostly) law-abiding member of society. I can be a good friend, obsess over Adam Levine’s new haircut and make jokes about Nutella and “Bachelor in Paradise.” And maybe, every now and then, I can even offer a few words of comfort to others who are facing similar heartbreak. As I told my son, “I believe that we will see Dad again, one day. And when we do, we need to have lived lives full of adventure, with plenty of tales to tell.” 

KD

For information on Grief Share at St. Mark Presbyterian, click here.